ANSYS Workbench Job Submission using Interactive Workstations

Introduction

Workstations create a seamless HPC experience on Rescale. They consist of a batch compute cluster with desktop visualization capability on the head node of your cluster. It provides a user interface for users to interact with the job setup directly from the analysis software.

Features of Workstations

  • Enables you to work with your batch job submission interactively. You can monitor jobs on the fly
  • Enables you to distribute your batch job submission across the entire cluster using an automated process
  • You can pause the analysis at anytime, edit the inputs or parameters of the job and either restart or rerun the analysis
  • Job results can be viewed during and right after completion of the simulation without any delays
  • Files are automatically synced from the batch job to the desktop session and vice-versa
  • There is no additional charges for the visualization

Key Notes

  • The desktop session is Linux (some software can run on Windows as well)
  • The files are synced to the work directory of the desktop session
  • Users need to explicitly terminate the job to shutdown the cluster
  • Session files should to be saved to the work folder, after which they will be uploaded to the job files under Results on the platform

ANSYS Mechanical Design Point Analysis Tutorial

This tutorial shows how to submit an ANSYS Workbench job using a workstation as well as showing you how to set up an ANSYS Workbench project with a parameter sweep on a 2 node cluster.

Users that submit jobs to the workstation, are limited to the resources on the workstation. ANSYS provides an option to scale up and submit jobs to a larger, remote cluster. However, the workflow is complicated. Workstations automate this process and hence provides the option to submit jobs to a large cluster with ease. ANSYS Optimization and Parameter sweeps are complicated and workstations provide a seamless methodology to run such jobs on the Rescale platform.

Import Job Setup
Get Job Results

The steps are as follows:

  • Click on Workstations on the left pane, and select New Workstation in the center pane.
  • Name the job: In this case, ANSYS Tutorial
  • In the search box under Select Software, search for ANSYS Interactive, and select the ANSYS Interactive Workflow tile
  • In the new Analysis Options box, select the Version as 2019 R2
  • Select the desired licensing option:
    • If you are using a Rescale License, you may select the Use On-Demand License by checking the box as shown below. Also, check the box to agree to the Software Licensing Agreement.
    • Alternatively, users using their own licenses may select the Use Existing License and specify the relevant licensing information.
  • Select the Hardware box to start hardware selection
  • Select the hardware configuration that you would like to run your simulation on. In this example, we search for and select the Emerald hardware as shown below
  • Increase the core count until you obtain 2 nodes of Emerald
  • Set a suitable wall time so that the cluster will be terminated after the simulation
  • Select the Attachments box to start file selection
  • Select the Upload from this computer to upload your Workbench project files to the job
  • You may now select Submit at the upper right to start the job
    • You may need to select a project on a right-hand panel for the submit button to become active (not shown)

Once the job is launched, you will notice that it looks very similar to a batch job, but differs in that there is an additional button to Connect on the top right of the screen

  • Click on the Status button to view the progress of the job submission
  • Click on Connect on the top right of the screen. This will open an in-browser desktop session for workstations that is running Linux.
  • Once the Desktop is launched, you will see the icon for ANSYS Workbench. Click on the icon to launch
e2e-launch-ansys-wb
  • Once ANSYS Workbench is launched, click on File and then click on Open. Browse to the shared folder as shown below and select the input file. Click on Open. You will be prompted to save the file. Click on Save in the same folder
e2e-open-wb-project
  • The Project Schematic will be displayed. Right click on Parameters and click on Properties
    On this workbench project, the force is varied and the output is Equivalent stress. These are 8 design points. The next few steps will show how to submit this analysis and distribute it across the cluster.
e2e-wb-parameter-properties
  • On the Parameter Set tab you will see the Solution Process Settings. Use the following settings.
    For Update Option select Submit to Remote Solver Manager. Set RSM Queue to Local. This will allow the job to distribute by default
  • Under Design Point Update Process, use the following settings. Set Job Submission to One job for Each Design Point. Set Component Execution Mode to Parallel. Set Number of Processes to 4. Each of the 8 design point will utilize 4 cores and hence 32 cores in total
  • Under License Checkout, set option to On-Demand. Each job will checkout a license with this option. The other option is to use Reserved License which allows you to use parametric packs, which might be a more viable option for parametric runs
e2e-wb-processors
  • Now right click on Parameter Set and click on Update Design Points.
e2e-job-monitor

Once the job is finished running, the results will be uploaded.

  • To check the results, double click on Parameter Set. The results will be displayed under List of Design Points as shown below
e2e-parameter-outline
  • Save the ANSYS Workbench project. The files are automatically saved to the work folder
  • Terminate the job to end the desktop session. Any files saved to the work folder will be uploaded to the job files under Results on the platform
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